Marketing professionals usually spend half their time extracting, cleaning, and combining data before they can analyze how a campaign has performed. Perceiving a gap in the industry, as the volume of data and marketing channels continue to multiply, Australian entrepreneur Dave Sanderson decided to start Nugit.

Nugit has developed artificial intelligence that extracts and integrates data from different sources in real time. It also has a natural language generation technology, which adds insights to the data and translates it into smart, beautifully-designed reports delivered via email or PowerPoint.

“Many of the legacy systems that are being used to manage marketing data are slow, overpriced, and take months to implement,” David, with over a decade’s experience in digital strategy, says. “We believe analytics can be leaner and more intelligent by leveraging technologies such as AI and machine learning.”

The company, which is based in Singapore, today announced it raised US$5.2 million in funding from Sequoia India to further develop its platform and double its team size by hiring more data scientists and engineers.

Founder and CEO David Sanderson. David previously led search and insight teams at Maxus Asia-Pacific, Datalicious, and iProspect.

Nugit manages over 146,000 advertising accounts on platforms such as Google, Adobe Analytics, Facebook, and Doubleclick for over 500 brands in 34 countries. Its key clients include Facebook itself, Johnson & Johnson, Digi, Group M, Startcom, and Publicis.

“Nugit’s technology is taking away the most laborious part of the marketer’s role. It frees up time for marketers so they can focus on what matters most – strategic analysis and delivering better results for their clients. We are automating the parts that no one wants or should have to do in the first place,” explains David.

The company charges its clients based on usage. But it has “bespoke” deployments, which will depend on the client’s requirements (for instance, additional data platforms that need to be integrated).